Philosophy as
- integral systematics
- science of meaning
- art of concepts
- reconstruction of experience (dialogue between concept and experience)
- reflection theory of practice (theoretical reflection of lived reflection)
- foundational discipline of the humanities
Johannes Heinrichs is among the few academic philosophers who maintain that: Philosophy as an integral systematic approach to the humanities and its step-by-step construction from basic conceptual elements is both possible and urgent today. This naturally includes reference to earlier thought, similar to how artists are inspired by earlier creations. However, an artist who only quotes earlier creations and "critically" imitates them is rightly called an epigone. We live in a time when Western philosophy has become at least 90% its own historiography and thus essentially philology of earlier philosophical works.
I. Methodological Reflection Theory: theoretical consideration of ontological (lived) reflection relationships
Heinrichs views philosophy as a whole as an "art of concepts" and within it as the progressive, methodical self-development of human reflective capacity. Reflection is much more comprehensive than theoretical-retrospective reflection. While the latter represents the form of philosophical thinking, this form of retrospective-theoretical reflection (thinking about) refers to content that consists not only of non-reflective objects, but largely also of lived self-reference (lived reflection).
II. Social Philosophy
After Heinrichs recognized in 1975 that the dialogical relationship between humans is a reflective relationship with a limited sequence of 4 stages (equivalent to the discovery of a social scientific constant), this developed into the reflection-system theory of the social, a comprehensive social theory.
III. Philosophical Semiotics: the systematic progression of Action - Language - Art - Mysticism
Heinrichs consistently distinguishes the collective-social perspective (also called collective "system reference" by Luhmann) methodologically strictly from the individual system reference of the individual actor.